Slimer

‘That was Charlie,’ said Paul. He went over to where Rochelle lay. Linda was already beside her, feeling for a pulse.

‘She’s still alive, but she’s been cut up pretty badly,’ she told him.

He nodded. Rochelle’s shirt was in tatters and he could see a number of vicious cuts on her upper chest. She’d been lucky not to have had her throat slashed open.

Now they knew what had been responsible for the ripped clothing they had found. But what had happened to the bodies? And what about the clothing that had been undamaged? There were still a lot of questions to be answered.

‘We’ll have to go find a first-aid kit,’ he said blankly. ‘I saw one in one of the bathrooms.’

Mark and Chris came over. Chris was staring around with a perplexed expression. ‘I don’t get it — where did the American go?’ she asked.

‘They were one and the same. Buckley became Charlie.’ Chris looked at him as if he was insane. ‘What are you talking about?’

He tried to explain. ‘Buckley turned into the creature. You know, like in the movies when Dr Jekyll turns into Mr Hyde…’ His voice faltered. When you tried to put it into words it did sound ridiculous.

‘That’s impossible,’ said Chris firmly.

‘Yes.’ He turned away from her. He didn’t have the emotional energy to argue.

‘It’s not impossible,’ said Mark dully. ‘It explains what Rochelle saw, what Alex saw and what I saw too.’ He shivered. ‘I caught a glimpse of that woman scientist on one of the monitors She looked kind of like that thing — the same sort of smooth face. And the same eyes. Fish eyes…’

Paul picked up the M16 that had been discarded by Buckley during his transformation. It felt cold. And he noticed there was no trace of Buckley’s clothing on the floor. What had happened to it? He couldn’t help thinking of the TV show, The Incredible Hulk — whenever the little guy turned into the Hulk he burst out of his clothing…

He suddenly felt like laughing but he knew if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop.

With an effort he took a grip on himself and said calmly, ‘So what we have here are a bunch of people who are infected with some synthetic gene that turns them into eight foot tall monsters. But why?’ He felt certain there was still a lot he didn’t know. And somehow he had to find it out. Their survival depended on it.

He was wondering how to go about this when the lights went out.

Ten

Shelley’s mind was in a turmoil of despair. Everything was going wrong. They were losing control and it was getting stronger…

They? He gave a bitter laugh. He was practically on his own now. Oh, there was still Durkins and a couple of others but he doubted if they would last for much longer. Carol Soames had been his last strong ally but she too had given way under the strain. What on earth had she thought she was up to trying to get off the rig? Poor girl. She couldn’t accept the fact that she was… finished. And then when that stupid young thug had stabbed her it was the final straw. To die twice was too much for any mind. Her last layer of sanity had been stripped away. Now she was like all the others.

He could still sense their presence, the mad ones. The ones whose minds had collapsed almost as soon as they realised what had happened to them. The reality of their situation had been too awful for them to accept. Now they wandered around like feeble, hysterical ghosts.

Would he go that route too? It was possible. When the last thread of control had slipped from his grasp he would be at the mercy of it and then insanity would be the only refuge. If only they could have kept it on its leash long enough for the young intruders to get away. But Carol’s violent death had ruptured something. It had come to the surface much more quickly and Shelley had known right away it was stronger. Much stronger.

And worse still, it was getting more intelligent. Was there a spill-over from all the trapped human minds? Were the insane ones actually fragmenting as individual personalities and becoming part of it? Whatever the answer it boded ill for all of them.

Especially the six young intruders. He doubted if he could keep it from them for very much longer.

Paul sat hunched over the video screen. Linda sat by the door, an M16 across her knees. They had been in the video room for several hours now. Paul was determined to find the answer ifit existed at all on any of the tapes. He knew he probably didn’t have long to do it. An emergency generator had cut in after the main one had failed but when it ran out of fuel it too would stop.

He sighed as he came to the end of another tape of technical gobbledegook that he couldn’t follow. Perhaps he’d already passed the explanation for the events on the platform but lacked the brains to understand it.

‘No luck?’ asked Linda.

‘Not yet. Let’s keep going, baby. There aren’t that many more to try.’

She gave him what he knew was meant to be a brave smile. It missed the target by miles. He felt sorry for her. She needed sleep badly. No, what she really needed was to get off this rig.

He slipped the next cassette into the machine and pressed the ‘Play’ button. Immediately he sat up. Shelley was on the screen again and talking excitedly.

‘. it’s terrible, of course, that we lost three good people but the scientific implications are enormous. It appears that we have been more successful than we dared hope. Now we have the task ofharnessing the Phoenix for use in human beings. ’

Shelley disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a shot of a shark swimming in a glass tank. Standing in front of the tank was Dr Carol Soames. She turned and grinned at whoever was holding the video camera. She looked very happy.

Shelley’s off-screen voice continued, ‘We were beginning to give up hope of ever finding a host organism that would accept Phoenix long enough for our needs. But then Dr Soames suggested we try a shark and so we had one shipped in. And, to everyone’s relief, it worked! Phoenix successfully formed a bond with the shark’s DNA material.

‘ I believe the reason for our success is linked with the unique nature of the shark’s metabolism. Unchanged for millions of years it is both remarkably effective and remarkably simple. Thus our Phoenix prototype had less trouble insinuating itself into the nucleii of the creature’s cells than it did with more sophisticated organisms.’

The camera closed in on the shark in the tank. Its blunt, vicious-looking head filled the screen. A round black eye stared out at Paul and he suddenly went cold. A horrible suspicion was growing within him.

‘In these shots,’ continued Shelley excitedly, ‘the oxygen content of the water has been reduced to less than two per cent. In normal circumstances the shark should have died but here you can see that it’s suffering no obvious ill effects. After a brief period of difficulty it adapted to the change in its environment… thanks to PhoenixV

The camera was pulling back now and Paul glimpsed a label on the front of the tank. He recognised it. It read ‘Carcharodon’.

Shelley’s face reappeared on the screen. ‘For nine days we submitted our small great white to an increasingly rigorous series of tests and it survived them all. Then, on the morning of the tenth day, we made an astounding discovery.

‘As part of the tests,’ came Shelley’s voice, ‘we had stopped feeding “Charlie” as someone had dubbed him by then. Unwittingly, we had prompted a completely unexpected development. As part of his new survival mechanism